And she climbed. 

Despite the burgeoning burden of her womb, the precious burden she valued above all else now, she climbed, taking great pains to guard her womb as she grappled each foothold into the granite stone face. In the dark, only lit by a sickly dim moon and the faded glow of her town in flames, she fumbled hand and foot into crevices jammed with knife-sharp shard of rock, or needle-pointed thorns pricking her as they jutted out like cruel detractors. 

Between the shards and thorns, and against the rough, scrubbed face of rock and withered, tough brush of the mountain’s punishing face, the woman found herself more bruises and cuts than her own self. 

Yet she pressed on. 

Rain trickled at first. Then clouds came, snuffing out her only lights- the moon and flames. Winds whipped through the valley and wound their way, all the faster up the mountain, like flood-channels. The rain fell heavier, thicker. So thick, that when the woman caught glimpses of light from the guttering flames in town, she saw the wind whipped the rain like the crest of waves against the mountain’s face- and herself. 

The hail began, stinging like gravel cast down, bit by bit. Ice began coating her much-needed cracks and crevices, ice glazed over her only footholds. With no sure footing or hold, several times did the woman lose grip and nearly had the mountain cast her off. 

Her worn limbs and weak, sore muscles burned with strain and exhaustion.  The ice and wind numbed her body stiff. 

Despair grew in her. The woman realized her pitiful body could never accomplish what her mind spurred her onto.  Her grip slipped and slipped on an ice-slicked vine she grasped onto. She wondered, as she cried bitterly, if she stopped gripping. If she let go, her tired body would drop to the earth, and death awaited her. 

“Why I am a fool? I can never do this! I am no more halfway to the cavern than I am at the top!” She wailed. Her cry tore out her despair at its fullest, and protested the pain and cold of her body.

She clung onto a rough crevice, her numb fingers clumsily and greedily clenching into is miserly cavity. She pressed her forehead against the icy, wet stone and wailed again. 

If she loosened her grip...would the fall be quick?

But then a kick stayed her hand. Her child moved within her womb. Another kick. She felt a warmth still within her womb. 

“No. I won’t die. Not until I see you born! I will live until you are born under a land free from all this!” she cried. A rage filled her and renewed her strength. She turned her head and faced the unforgiving rain and wind, and declared to them, “And then you both can take me! But not until then!”

She climbed, fired by her fury, impervious at her skinned palms, and shoes torn to shreds.

Her grabbed an unusually wide brim- it was smooth, as though fashioned by tool or will. Her fingers found a smoother cavity, like a carved edge. Pulling herself up, her eyes saw now the cavern!

She reached the bottom lip of the cavern’s mouth!

“Fail me not now!” she urged herself, thrusting herself over the brim and clambered with her bruised legs inside the cavern. 

Gaining her breath, the woman laid on her side. Protectively, she touched her womb. Another kick told her the child still lived. She cried. She reached the cavern.